- Researchers looked at whether socioeconomics influences who we trust.
- The study used controlled experiments with 1,900 participants.
- Results show we trust those from humble backgrounds more than those with privileged backgrounds.
Everyone needs people who can be trusted. But how do you choose? Turns out financial background could be key.
New research published by the American Psychological Association suggests that people are more apt to put their trust in someone from a modest background, compared to those who went to private schools or vacationed in Europe.
The stakes are high, said lead researcher Kristin Laurin, a researcher at the University of British Columbia, in a written statement.
“Trust is essential for healthy relationships. Without it, romantic partnerships can fail, workplaces can suffer and social divisions can grow,” she said. “But what makes people trust someone in the first place?”
Who will you trust?
The researchers used several experiments involving more than 1,900 participants to explore the impact of social class on giving one’s trust to a person, looking at both social class while growing up and in the present.
The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
One experiment centered on a trust game that ostensibly involved real players, but was actually peopled by fictional folk. The participants filled out a profile and got copies of profiles from what they believed were other players.
Fake profiles included details like going to public school or working part-time, which might indicate growing up with less money. Others described going to private schools or vacations in Europe.
For the game itself, participants — the “trusters” — had 10 raffle tickets for a drawing for two $100 gift cards. They could transfer any number of those raffle tickets to one of the fictional players — the “trustees.” Per the release, trusters were told any tickets transferred to a trustee would be tripled and the trustee could decide to return as many or as few tickets to the truster as he or she wanted.
The study considered trust as “putting oneself at the mercy of the other player. How many raffle tickets participants transferred to another player indicated how much they behaviorally trusted that player.”
The researchers also examined trust as an expectation that the other player would be trustworthy. Participants were asked, “If you gave all 10 tickets to this person, they would have 30. How many do you think they would give back?”
In another experiment, the fake profiles focused on current socioeconomic status. Players were asked to rate the morality of the others, based on the profiles. They showed more behavioral trust toward those with lower income backgrounds, regardless of whether it was past or present. But they only believed a player was more trustworthy if he or she grew up in a lower-income household.
“Our research shows that people draw a clear line between someone’s childhood and their current situation,” Laurin said. “They generally saw people who grew up in lower-class homes as more moral and trustworthy. While they sometimes acted as if they trusted people who are currently lower class, they didn’t always believe those people would honor that trust.”
Lesson from the study
Laurin suggested that how people present themselves in situations requiring trust could be important.
“If you’ve always been wealthy, for example, you might want to downplay that history and focus on the now, whereas if you’ve always struggled financially, making it clear that you grew up with humble roots might be more to your advantage,” she said.
She noted that findings on trusting people who grew up in lower-class homes doesn’t address whether they are actually trustworthy. “We didn’t examine whether a person’s childhood or current class background actually influences their behavior,” Laurin said. “That’s a question for future studies — especially to understand when trust is misplaced or when people miss chances to trust others fairly."